Scientists SLAM Gilligan’s Island

This is all that remains of Gilligan's Island today, thanks to rising ocean levels.

NEW YORK – A team of concerned scientists from North America and Europe are at the United Nations this week, hoping to draw the world’s attention to critical scientific inaccuracies depicted in the television show Gilligan’s Island, which aired from 1964-67. An article detailing their 35-year-long study is to be published simultaneously in several academic science journals next month.

“We first became suspicious in 1975, watching reruns, when we noticed some elements of the show just didn’t ring true,” said researcher Brian Oblivion of Cambridge University in England. “Particularly the sequence where Gilligan floats after entering a helium-filled cave. It’s important to understand the distinction between the effects of helium and anti gravity on the human body.”

Oblivion fears for the safety of future astronauts, should NASA or some other space agency rely on the program’s faulty science when sending people to the moon or beyond.

“That show is whack,” he said.

Professor Emmett Brown of Hill Valley University, who led the research project until his shooting death in 1985, once famously quipped, “Stupid is as Gilligan’s Island does.”

Though most people involved in the production of Gilligan’s Island are deceased or in prison, lead technical consultant Buddy Little, 77, said all the criticism has stung him emotionally.

“Not only that,” he adds, “it hurts my feelings.”

Little showed reporters a coconut lie detector, one of many props from the show he keeps in his house.

“Most people don’t know this is a working lie detector,” he explains, putting it on his head. “Go ahead; ask me if it’s a working lie detector.”

Flashing green light or no, Dr. Oblivion from Cambridge is not convinced.

“Now, take a show like Lost,” he says, “There’s a reason that show is critically acclaimed and Gilligan’s Island is derided. Lost is painstaking in its scientific accuracy.”

For readers who are unfamiliar, Lost takes place on an unnamed island that is able to travel through time and space at the turn of a horizontally deposed wheel. The island also cures paralysis and cancer and is inhabited by supernatural beings, people who never age, and a malevolent smoke demon that can shape-shift into human form. Characters deploy hydrogen bombs without injury and, in the process, create alternate universes.

The show was originally called Jacob’s Island, but producers changed it to Lost in an effort to distance the production from its gilliganous predecessor.

To date, few people have been willing to speak out about TV’s other popular island-themed program, Survivor, though former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin has been quoted as saying the producers rely on “junk science” to tell the Lord-of-the-Flies inspired tale.

Viewers may need to prepare themselves for yet another show featuring people on an island. An unnamed reporter is said to be pitching a one-off reality special to several networks in which Palin, Jon and Kate Gosselin, the cast of Jersey Shore, and Heidi Montag are killed and eaten by crocodiles in the first five minutes.

Ethan Romsaid

Hey, why does the island cure cancer??? Rose was never a “candidate”, right? There was no reason to save her for anything. And where is she now? And how come no babies can be born on the island? Except for Aaron. And why didn’t he have to come back to the island? Come to think of it, the whole show don’t make no sen- Part 2